Promises
by LosingInTranslation
Summary: The BAU is asked to investigate an unusual missing persons case that has a very personal connection to the team. Case file COMPLETE
1. Chapter 1

**AUTHOR:** LosingInTranslation (losingntrnslatn, Jennifer)  
**DISCLAIMER:** Don't own anything associated with the show… I just like playing with the characters in it from time to time. Dance Monkeys! Dance!  
**RATING:** T - Teen  
**SPOILERS:** Through US Aired Episodes of Season 4  
**WORD COUNT:** 1072  
**SUMMARY:** The BAU is asked to investigate an unusual missing persons case that has a very personal connection to the team.

**A/N:** This is one of those monster epics I am so well know for in the CSI fandom. It is completely written and I am going through the edits with my betas as quickly as possible. There are a total of nine chapters, and I will post them as I complete the edits. It is most definitely a case file fic, with a lot of interaction between the entire team. I hope you enjoy it.

**REVIEWS:** Reviews are the way I know if people are enjoying the work or not. So, if you leave one, THANKS! And if not, I hope you found at least a little something to brighten your day, and thanks for taking the time to read.

**

* * *

**

**Chapter 1**

_Truth is the highest thing that man may keep._

_-**Geoffrey Chaucer**, The Canterbury Tales_

J.J. waited for everyone to file into the briefing room one at a time, each with a coffee cup in their hands. It was just like any other morning, and most of the team acted that way. Everyone but Prentiss.

Emily was on edge, and J.J. knew it was because she was going out on a limb. After the Benton case, Prentiss most likely assumed she had used up all of her credit with the team. But J.J. knew better.

No one could ever use up their credit on this team. They needed each other too much for that to ever happen.

As Rossi and Hotch walked into the conference room talking about another case, Prentiss' eyes jumped up from the folders she was fiddling with and landed squarely on Rossi. J.J. suddenly realized what it was like for the team to wait around for her to finally admit her relationship with Will.

While she was pretty sure the rest of the team was still in the dark about the two, she wondered just how long that would last. Moratoriums on profiling aside, they knew about each other in ways no other co-workers ever could. Secrets were practically impossible in the BAU. And no one knew that better than she did.

Hotch took his seat last and nodded to J.J., "The gang's all here. So what's all the mystery about?"

J.J. shrugged nonchalantly and took her seat next to Reid. "No mystery… It's a suspected missing person case." She glanced at Emily, who looked like she was about to climb out of her skin, and smirked. "It just came to me through…alternative channels."

All eyes immediately turned to Prentiss.

Suddenly the focus of attention, Emily chuffed, "Thanks a lot, J.J." Emily turned her head to the side and ground her jaw closed. "No pressure here."

Rossi was the first to speak up. "What's the case, Emily?" His tone was even and devoid of any emotion or charm, which should have tipped off the entire team that something was going on between them , but no one seemed to notice.

"Yeah, Prentiss. What've you got?" Morgan threw out his question, almost as a challenge.

"An acquaintance of mine, she's been in Mexico and Central America for the last few years." She quickly reviewed her notes and tried to collect herself as she went on with the presentation. "She's been working with the local authorities, trying to train them on dealing with sex based offenses. Helping them to get past the machismo factor and actually doing something to protect the victims, as well as catch the offenders."

Morgan rolled his eyes. "Yeah, we've had a little experience dealing with the problem."

The knowing looks among the team members seemed to intrigue Emily, but she quickly shook the idea out of her head and continued forward. "Anyway, she met her husband in Mexico. He's a teacher, but he's also a humanitarian aide worker, so they've both moved around a lot. Plus you add in the whole third world angle to the mix and it makes things pretty iffy when it comes to communication." Emily stopped to find a specific piece of paper in her case file folder.

Reid took the opportunity presented to him. "Actually, most of Central America can no longer be categorized as third world, with the prevalence of satellite and fiber optic communications in many of the cities. But while all of this makes for interesting conversation, I guess I don't really see how this would be a BAU case, Emily?"

"If you would let me finish…" The irritated glare Emily shot at Reid was more than enough to silence him, and she continued. "Six months ago, her husband's father stopped all correspondence."

"Six months? That's a pretty cold trail for a missing person case, Prentiss. Why'd your friends wait so long?" Morgan's skepticism was exactly why J.J. felt it was best for Emily to present the case.

"Because they were pinned down in the middle of a drug war in Colombia." She fixed her face with a solemn expression as she delivered the final blow, "Where her husband was killed, and she was deported." Pausing for a sliver of silence to show her respect, Emily went on, "After she got back to the States, she tried to contact her father-in-law, but he wasn't where he last contacted them from. Actually, it appears as though most of his belongings are there, but no one has seen or heard from him for six months."

"And she's only now alerting the authorities?" Hotch's brow was furrowed a little more than normal as he questioned Prentiss.

"No." Emily's frustration showed on her face and J.J. had to try very hard not to jump in and take over. "She's been trying to get an investigation into his disappearance started for the last two months, but she's running into a brick wall with the local authorities. No one there believes there's a case at all. He dropped off the grid a couple years ago, doing some soul-searching. Seems that he left his job, his home, everything, with nothing more than a note then."

"What has her so convinced he's really missing then? Grown men are allowed to disappear any time they like, ya know?" Morgan once again threw down with his conclusions. .

"Because of his son. Before he left everything behind two years ago, he made a promise to his son that they would talk at least once a month. Even when he went off the grid, and with all the communication problems, they still managed to talk." Emily pulled out a stack of folders and handed the first one to J.J.

"Finding out there wasn't a single attempt made while they were cut off in Colombia had her worried. Finding him gone without a word to his son convinced her something had happened. Not to mention…" Emily nodded at J.J. and she began handing out the folders. "What makes it a BAU case…is her father-in-law."

Without missing a beat, they all opened their folders to the first page and J.J. actually felt the air leave the room.

Emily began to list off the vital statistics, "Fifty seven year old white male. Last known address; Osage, Idaho. One son, Steven, deceased. Name-"

Hotch tried to finish her list, "Jason-"

"Gideon." Reid gasped the name.


	2. Chapter 2

**AUTHOR:** LosingInTranslation (losingntrnslatn, Jennifer)  
**DISCLAIMER:** Don't own anything associated with the show… I just like playing with the characters in it from time to time. Dance Monkeys! Dance!  
**RATING:** T - Teen  
**SPOILERS:** Through US Aired Episodes of Season 4  
**WORD COUNT:** 1800  
**SUMMARY:** The BAU is asked to investigate an unusual missing persons case that has a very personal connection to the team.

**A/N:** This is one of those monster epics I am so well know for in the CSI fandom. It is completely written and I am going through the edits with my betas as quickly as possible. There are a total of nine chapters, and I will post them as I complete the edits. It is most definitely a case file fic, with a lot of interaction between the entire team. I hope you enjoy it.

**REVIEWS:** Reviews are the way I know if people are enjoying the work or not. So, if you leave one, THANKS! And if not, I hope you found at least a little something to brighten your day, and thanks for taking the time to read.

**

* * *

**

**Chapter 2**

Emily knew the case was theirs when every eye trained on her reflected back with shock and dismay.

Hotch was the first to work past the surprise. "Who is this daughter-in-law? I never knew Steven had gotten married." He began to flip through the pages in the file as Emily nodded to J.J. to continue the presentation.

Clicking the remote in her hand, a passport photo popped up on the screen. "Lorena Gideon, psychologist and humanitarian worker, attached to the Global Rights of Women Foundation out of Seattle, Washington. Wife of…" She flipped the remote again and another passport photo came into view, showing a younger, happier version of Jason Gideon, with bright blue eyes. "Steven Gideon, who worked with several social and political action groups as he completed his doctoral work in sociology. They were married in a small city in Mexico two years ago."

As J.J. flipped to the next screen, Emily took over once more when the police report from the Colombian authorities came up. "Steven was killed when he and Lori were trying to help a small village outside of Bogota develop their economic independence from the coca crops _encouraged_ by the local drug lords. Two warring factions, in an effort to claim the land for their own, trapped the village and all of its inhabitants, performing late night raids until the villagers relented and gave in to their demands. Steven was killed in one of those raids, and the villagers hid Lori until it was safe to sneak her out."

The next flip showed the deportation paperwork for Lorena Gideon. "Because she was accused of conspiring to incite a riot, the Colombian authorities were forced to deport her from the country once she surfaced looking for help to reclaim her husband's remains. That's when I first became involved with the case."

"Let me guess," Morgan asked dryly, "she figured with your State Department connections, you could help her out?"

"Exactly…" Emily could see the irritation in Hotch's eyes, even if he did stop short of actually rolling them. But looking at Dave was not an option, because she knew he would be rolling his eyes at the mention of her mother. "I passed the information on to my mother, who called a few people and you know how it goes after that. The last I heard from Lori, she was headed back from their place in Mexico City to Bogota in order to claim his remains."

Quietly, Reid finally spoke up again, "So, you knew where Gideon was all this time, and didn't say anything?"

"God no. I had no idea he even had a kid, and it's not like Gideon is such an uncommon name. So, I didn't put it all together until Lori contacted me this week about her father-in-law." She quickly put his fears aside. No one had taken Gideon's sudden departure harder than Reid, and Emily could only imagine how difficult all of this was for him. "He did everything in his power to make sure almost no one could find him. Even with the information Lori gave me, we had a hard time tracking anything down."

Garcia, always with the best timing in the world, chose that moment to walk into the briefing room. "And you know if I had trouble tracking his annoyingly, somewhat endearing, idiosyncratic keister down, then it was practically impossible." She plopped down next to Reid and nudged his shoulder, "He didn't want to be found, pumpkin. Not by anyone, but especially not by us."

Reid still looked like a rejected puppy when he whispered, "He wanted at least someone to find hi-"

"Don't even go there, my little factoid oracle…" Garcia wrapped a comforting arm around their emotionally vulnerable teammate. "The man made a promise to his kid. And you know all about Gideon and his promises." When Reid gave her half of a grin, she smiled brightly and turned back to Emily.

"What were you able to find, Garcia?" Emily asked, deflecting the attention away from Reid.

"Not a whole heck of a lot, my lovelies." J.J. handed her the remote and Garcia got down to business. "A small, by Idaho standards, property, way outside the city of Coeur d'Alene, titled to the late Steven Gideon five years ago. No way the kid could've bought it, as he was still in grad school and worked for bupkis at the time. Title was transferred from the name of Sylvia Degault, late grandmother of the great Jason Gideon, and let me tell you…I had to do some major digging to find that much out. The man truly is an enigma."

After cycling through a few land title microfilms, Garcia stopped on a satellite image of the property. "The property itself is basically worthless. Too graded and rocky for farming, too isolated for irrigation, and too remote to make even a decent marijuana crop worth growing." Emily held her laugh, but when Garcia looked up, she realized too late she had been rambling again. "But, I digress."

"Anyway…" The satellite images moved in closer as she spoke, "No activity on that land beyond fuzzy woodland creatures until just over two years ago, when a Steven Degault moved in, claiming to have rented the place from an old friend. Lived solely on cash, only surfaced in town once a month for supplies, every two months in the winter. Locals reported that he was, and I quote, _repeatedly_ 'a quiet man, kept to himself, and minded his own business.' Seriously, it was like _Stepford: The Lumberjack_ _Edition_ calling around up there. Verbatim, everyone said exactly the same thing." Garcia shuddered at the thought.

Hotch turned back to Emily with his next question, "What makes the daughter-in-law think something happened?"

"He just vanished." Emily looked through her notes as she read off the list. "Not a trace of him at the house, no mail, no shipments after about six weeks, his tax bill wasn't paid, and he stopped trying to contact his son."

"They weren't close… They were estranged for a long time after his PTSD." Hotch seemed to be having a hard time understanding the nature of his relationship with Steven and it was odd for Hotch to be confused about anything.

"I don't know what to tell you about that, Hotch. Lori just said he and Steven had a very close relationship in the time she's known her husband, and that Gideon made a promise to Steven that they would always stay in contact." Emily handed him a copy of the letter showing exactly that. "They even gave each other special access to a private portal with their information and a protected messaging system. Gideon didn't trust open email, or even phone calls. Lori's husband would only tell her that his father was a little on the paranoid side, but that his past pretty much made him that way."

"One of those, 'if they really are after you, are you still paranoid' kinda things, huh?" Garcia could never stay silent for long, and Emily shrugged to acknowledge her comment.

"And why didn't the local authorities investigate his disappearance?" Of course Dave was the one to keep things all business in the briefing room.

Garcia piped up again, "It's Idaho, Sir. People randomly show up and disappear all the time, and everyone minds their own business. The only people they pay attention to are the Feds and the big mouths who bring the Feds in the first place. These people just want to be left alone to live out their survivalist fantasies of self-importance in relative peace, with their life-sized GI Joe sets and big boy Tonka trucks." Rolling her eyes, Garcia finished. "They don't care if someone stops getting their uber deluxe rare mountain finch bird seed and stops paying a few bills, just so long as Johnny Law doesn't come a-knockin' on their bivouac door."

Pinching the bridge of his nose, a hint of exasperation in his voice, Dave asked, "Okay, what about the house?" He often had a hard time following Garcia and Emily noticed Dave seemed to have appointed himself the traffic cop for her rambling explanations. Garcia snapped back to the topic at hand and clicked over to the next item.

"House nothing; it's more like a mountain guerilla compound. And anywhere else in the country, this would seem out of place, but in militia man country, it's just the compound down the block, and keeping up with the Joneses." Garcia rolled her eyes as she put up a split screen of a dozen structures bearing a very similar appearance to the first.

When the screen transformed back to the original compound, she went on to explain, "But this one was different from all the others. If for no other reason than because there wasn't a well-stocked armory on the premises. The rest of the town had ammo and full auto kits coming in through their P.O. boxes, but Mr. Degault had regular shipments from book dealers and specialized bird feed providers. Also of particular note, would be the super intense, hi-tech camera and microwave jammer security system completely encompassing the entire compound." Images of invoices and product specification sheets floated across the screen as she spoke. "As well as the most awesome motion sensor system throughout the perimeter. And lions and tigers and bears, Oh My!"

"So, what you're saying is there's an almost obsessive level of security for someone who's reading old books and feeding the birds, but isn't hiding a cache of weapons for the coming apocalypse?" Dave gave her one of those raised eyebrow looks that normally shut her down, but Garcia was on a roll.

"No almost about it Supervisory Special Agent Rossi… **_This_** guy is over the top, balls to the wall, out of his freaking gourd obsessive about his security system. Langley doesn't use that much perimeter security." Her gestures always got more exaggerated when she was ramping up, and Emily could tell that was exactly where she was headed. "We're talking about a Fort Dietrich, Cheyenne Mountain, Area Fifty One, all rolled up together, level of security. Not a mountain cabin in the woods feeding the birdies vacation nutjob shack kind of thing. This is a guy who wants NO ONE to visit…EVER!"

"Baby-girl…" Morgan held both hands up to show her he was not threatening her assessment. "I think we get the point now."

"Right." She took a moment to collect herself and then turned back to the screen. "As I was saying, the whole thing pretty much screams Gideon, if you look under enough rocks, that is. It also tells me not just anyone was getting into that place without some serious work, unless…"

Reid exhaled sharply, "It was someone he knew."


	3. Chapter 3

**AUTHOR:** LosingInTranslation (losingntrnslatn, Jennifer)  
**DISCLAIMER:** Don't own anything associated with the show… I just like playing with the characters in it from time to time. Dance Monkeys! Dance!  
**RATING:** T - Teen  
**SPOILERS:** Through US Aired Episodes of Season 4  
**WORD COUNT:** 1509  
**SUMMARY:** The BAU is asked to investigate an unusual missing persons case that has a very personal connection to the team.

**A/N:** This is one of those monster epics I am so well know for in the CSI fandom. It is completely written and I am going through the edits with my betas as quickly as possible. There are a total of nine chapters, and I will post them as I complete the edits. It is most definitely a case file fic, with a lot of interaction between the entire team. I hope you enjoy it.

**REVIEWS:** Reviews are the way I know if people are enjoying the work or not. So, if you leave one, THANKS! And if not, I hope you found at least a little something to brighten your day, and thanks for taking the time to read.

**

* * *

**

**Chapter 3**

The flight to Coeur D'Alene was tense. No one knew what to say, and they certainly had no clue how to act. It was bad enough knowing Gideon was out there wandering around on his own, but this was different. There was the possibility he was really gone this time. And that was a reality none of them were prepared for.

The only thing that kept the flight from being a total waste was Rossi losing his suave façade with Garcia as she busted his chops about his lack of tech skills. Baby-girl was always good for a laugh, but watching her goad Rossi into a stuttering fit was well worth the price of admission. Of course, seeing Prentiss try to rescue him without looking like she was trying to rescue him was good, too.

As much as he wanted to join in on the fun, he had other priorities on the flight. Right after the briefing, Hotch had taken him and J.J. aside and asked them to keep an extra eye on Reid for the duration. Hotch was worried the kid would be too messed up about Gideon to think straight and would get himself in a world of hurt in the process. The looks he and J.J. had been exchanging since getting their orders let him know that they both agreed with Hotch.

Reid had his nose buried in a book on Chaucer, which told Derek everything he needed to know; Reid was struggling. "Whatcha got there, kid?"

"What?" Reid glanced up, that dazed and confused look heavily entrenched on his face. "This…oh…um…it's a book… A, ah, book detailing the modern literary references to Chaucer and an assessment on whether or not those references were accurate or effective."

Derek nodded and asked, "Something from your mother?"

"Ah, no. Though in actuality, she was one of the contributors to this particular work, before she got, um, sick, that is." Reid stumbled through his words, no different than any other time he was nervous, but Derek could see there was more to it when he finally admitted. "It was a gift…from a, ah, from a friend."

That was something new, but Derek was glad to hear there was at least a lady around him at some point. "Must be a special lady… Ya know, to know you that well."

"Yeah…" Reid nearly choked back the words that time, but he eventually ended the conversation with, "She was." Past tense: that said it all.

So much of Reid's life was about the past, and try as he might, Derek never could seem to pull the kid out into the light of the present. Thankfully J.J. sat down across from them to save him from anymore awkward conversation.

"Spencer, we've gotten some documents faxed over from the crime scene unit at the Coeur D'Alene field office." She handed him a small stack of papers which he immediately clenched in his fingers. "Garcia and I thought you'd best be able to tell if they were actually Gideon's. Hotch thinks it looks like his writing, but we just figured that you'd have a better-"

"Grasp on the idiosyncrasies of his writing style and word usage. Yes, I would." He put the book down beside him and picked up his laptop. Flipping it open, he pulled his glasses out of his shirt pocket and got down to work.

With the two of them staring at him for several minutes, Reid looked up and asked, "Do you mind? It won't be long before we land, and I want to have these ready by then."

"Um, yeah… Sure thing, Spence." J.J. got up tried to shake off his dismissal. Derek quietly followed her.

Once they were safely out of Reid's earshot, he took J.J.'s elbow and got her to face him. "Hey, don't take it personal. The kid's got a lot going on in that big brain of his. So, you know, manners aren't real high on his priority list."

Sadly, she shook her head. "It's not that, Derek. He's closing himself off…emotionally." The look in J.J.'s eyes told him exactly what had her so upset.

"Hey, now. There's no way. If he was using again, I'd know. And if I didn't, Prentiss sure as hell would." They all lived in the fear that Reid would backslide into his addiction, but with so many pairs of eyes on him, Derek was sure they would spot it. "I'm serious, J.J… If I have to carry him around on my back, I am not leaving him alone with this, okay? I promise."

"Just…please, don't let him fall like that. I don-…" J.J. looked like she was about to fall apart with only the thought, and it nearly broke his heart. "I don't think I could handle that…not again."

Derek laid a comforting hand along her upper arm and squeezed. "Trust me on this one. Never gonna happen with me on the job." She only nodded and walked back toward the cockpit to take another call.

When Derek turned around, he found Rossi giving him the head tilt, signaling that he had his own concerns. Slipping in behind the table, right next to Emily, Derek inserted himself into their conversation. In a voice meant to be heard by everyone, he asked, "So, Dave, what's your handle on the financial angle here?"

Once the nature of their conversation was understood by everyone else, he dropped his voice and continued, "All right, what's the deal with this family, guys? And why didn't we know anything about it?"

Dave shrugged in a non-committal gesture and explained, "Jason Gideon really was an enigma, Morgan. He let so little of his personal life into the job, we were all shocked when we found out he was even married, and the kid left us all bowled over. But then again, the bureau was a different place back then. Most of us kept our personal lives to ourselves, because we already knew too much about each other as it was."

Emily rolled her eyes as Dave's gaze flitted across her face. "Tell me about it. It borders on claustrophobia sometimes." She was careful not to make direct eye contact with Dave, but not so much with Morgan. If not for trying so hard, no one would have ever put two and two together. But for all of their smarts, they really were bad at hiding this one thing, simply because they were that good at it.

"Yeah, so what do you make of this daughter-in-law?" Derek directly addressed Emily, since she apparently knew the woman on some level.

"Oh, well, she and I went to college together. Her father is a higher up with the Mexican Federales, and they sent her to school in the States. She and I hit it off because she didn't have to always speak English with me." Emily nodded when she got blank stares from both men. "Okay, I really don't know that terribly much about her since college, but she works with groups my mother has sponsored off and on over the years, and so there's been some contact, whenever they needed favors to get someone out of jam. Mother worked the State Department angle, and I'd do what I could with Justice. Nothing against regs, just a little gentle persuasion now and then."

Dave shook his head and Derek watched as Emily's spine straightened a little tighter. "I think what Morgan wants to know is, do you trust her, Emily?"

"Oh, yeah. She hasn't got a dishonest bone in her body. And really, she's got no reason to lie, and every reason to get this thing sorted out and find her father-in-law. Preferably alive."

Emily's insistence begged Derek to ask about her reasoning. "Why would you say that? I mean, if she's the only surviving heir, and the property and all is in her husband's name, wouldn't Gideon's death be in her best interest?"

At first Emily stared at both he and Dave like they had grown a second head, and then it was as though a light went off behind her eyes. She called out to everyone in the cabin of the jet. "Um, hey guys..." With all eyes on her, and J.J. peeking in from the front, Emily dropped the bomb. "I think I forgot to tell everyone a really important detail."

"What is it?" Hotch's brow was barely over the bridge of his nose as he spoke.

"Lori wants to find her father-in-law for two reasons. Not just to give him the news about Steven…" She paused, working up the courage to leave them all speechless. "She's eight months pregnant."

The silence that fell over the cabin continued all the way to the field office. No one knew quite what to say, and they all had to re-think their theories about the case. Derek realized nothing about this one was going to be cut and dried.

No matter which way it landed, it was going to hurt, and it was going to hurt bad.


	4. Chapter 4

**AUTHOR:** LosingInTranslation (losingntrnslatn, Jennifer)  
**DISCLAIMER:** Don't own anything associated with the show… I just like playing with the characters in it from time to time. Dance Monkeys! Dance!  
**RATING:** T - Teen  
**SPOILERS:** Through US Aired Episodes of Season 4  
**WORD COUNT:** 2751  
**SUMMARY:** The BAU is asked to investigate an unusual missing persons case that has a very personal connection to the team.

**A/N:** This is one of those monster epics I am so well know for in the CSI fandom. It is completely written and I am going through the edits with my betas as quickly as possible. There are a total of nine chapters, and I will post them as I complete the edits. It is most definitely a case file fic, with a lot of interaction between the entire team. I hope you enjoy it.

**REVIEWS:** Reviews are the way I know if people are enjoying the work or not. So, if you leave one, THANKS! And if not, I hope you found at least a little something to brighten your day, and thanks for taking the time to read.

**

* * *

**

**Chapter 4**

From the word go, it was nothing but a bad case. Coming on board six months after the fact was the least of their worries. The personal investment for the team meant that no matter the outcome, it was not going to be easy. Not when their best case scenario involved Gideon simply sliding further into his twisted sense of paranoia and breaking free from his last remaining tether to humanity. Worst case scenario…well, the worst case was not something Dave wanted to think about just yet.

The fact that no one in the town closest to Gideon felt there was a case at all certainly added another layer of difficulty to it. He worried that without cooperation from the locals there would be little chance of finding anything to point to a cause for Gideon's disappearance. And then there was the disappearance itself. Was he really missing? Or was this daughter-in-law of Gideon's merely mistaken about his level of commitment to his son?

When he worked with Gideon in the past, he was shocked to learn the man even had a family, because he was so single minded in his work. Dave had a hard time reconciling the two different Gideon's; the man and the profiler. They were simply two entirely different entities, and he wondered if keeping them separate was ultimately what led to his fall from grace, when the two were forced to occupy the same mind.

Many found fault with his mix of the professional and the personal, but Dave also understood his own mind. He was unable to shut off his humanity from his reason, and instead chose to use that humanity to temper his reason with a heart. Pure reason was a dangerous and lonely space to occupy, and Dave was not a man who handled lonely very well. What little he did know of Jason Gideon told him the man thrived on being alone.

With half the team sorting through the items brought back to the Coeur D'Alene field office, and the other half on their way to Gideon's compound, Dave wondered which group was better off. Reid, J.J. and Hotch were combing through Gideon's personal effects, while he and Emily were being treated to the Morgan-Garcia Show in the front seat on their way up into the hills of Idaho.

"Now, are you really gonna sit there, trying to tell me that absolute cheese-fest from the eighties is better than my amped up, super-powered, Starbuck as a bad ass honey, Battlestar? Woman, please!" Morgan's laugh punctuated his ranting question.

"I'm telling you…" Garcia was twisted sideways in her seat, waggling a finger in Morgan's direction as she debated him in a way only she could. "That the original Battlestar Galactica was a much better portrayal of the hero's journey, showing all the qualities of the myth and the legend of the hero. Whereas, your BSG is closer to the style of the Greek epics, which include the hero's journey, but don't focus on it. They show the grand theatre, all the drama and the tragedy, and leaving the ending totally up to personal interpretation. It's all about the philosophy, and not the tale or the lesson. It's just different."

Morgan shook his head and asked, "So, why'd you say my BSG sucked?"

Garcia dismissed him with a shrug and turned forward again as she said, "Duh! Because I prefer my Starbuck as a sweet talking hottie of the male variety."

Normally that would have been the end of the argument, but from beside him he heard Emily jump into the fray. "I'm right there with you, Penelope."

Her joining the meaningless argument was just a way to pass the time, and under most conditions Dave would simply have engrossed himself in the view, or looking through the case file with an amused smile, but hearing the barks of comfortable laughter being exchanged among his team members felt good. Seeing Emily smile and laugh without reservation was like a balm. As hard as the case was about to get, that laughter was his lifeline.

"All right, Rossi…" Morgan called over his shoulder him to jump in. "I need some back up here, man. Which Battlestar is better?"

"Sorry, I can't help you on this one, Morgan." Dave had to do his very best not to look beside him when he admitted, "Only time I watch TV it's the Outdoor Channel or the Food Network… Everything else depresses me."

Garcia twisted around to stare him down, and suddenly Dave felt like he was on display. "Okay, Food Network I'll buy… But the Outdoor Channel? Seriously? Next stop, Hooterville TV?"

Emily automatically blurted out, "For the Ducks Unlimited show." The moment the words left her mouth Dave could see the panic in her eyes, and as he looked at the expressions on both Morgan's and Garcia's faces he knew that they had caught the slip as well.

Emily immediately took a defensive posture. "What? Like no one else has seen the water dog pictures or the antique double barrel in his office? He's either a duck hunter or has an unnatural attachment to Elmer Fudd cartoons."

Dave smiled when the others looked to him for confirmation. "Hmmm… Well, I have found myself chasing a great many wascally wabbits over the years."

The tension in the car was immediately dispelled with the raise of his eyebrow after delivering the fatal last laugh.

However, as they pulled up to the front gate of the compound, all that tension, and more, was back. Seeing the crime scene collection trucks and the armed checkpoint let each of them know it was not just another case.

Once they were cleared to drive up to the house, Dave decided someone needed to take charge. "Garcia, you should check in with the tech team. I understand they've been having some trouble cracking the rest of the security system."

"Righteo, Boss Man." Garcia gave him a two fingered salute that drew a chuckle from everyone else.

"I should probably debrief the lead scene investigator," Morgan added as they came to stop in front of the house.

"After we do a walk-through at the house, Prentiss and I will head back to town and start on the interviews." Morgan turned to regard him as he explained, "I want to have a good idea of who we're dealing with before we start asking questions."

"It's just Gideon, man, and you already know him." Morgan was sincere with his observation and Dave had to answer him honestly.

"We _knew_ him, Morgan. We knew the Gideon he used to be, but this man…" Dave gestured at the plain, militaristic compound to demonstrate his point. "He is not the Gideon we knew."

Morgan nodded. Dave hated to say it, but the team needed to understand where they stood on this case. They were not looking for the man they knew, but the man he had become. Or, from the looks of it, the shattered semblance of the man he had become.

An hour later, he and Emily were back on the road. There was really nothing there to see giving them even an inkling as to the man who inhabited that space. It was plain, non-descript and completely devoid of human touch. It just felt wrong, and no amount of time standing in the vacant home would tell Dave anything else.

Halfway back to the small hamlet that served the area, Emily exhaled sharply and he knew she was ready to speak. "That has to be the cleanest scene I have ever seen."

"You think someone cleaned up?" Dave knew enough to only ask the questions that would keep her talking. Emily was someone who thought things out on her feet, and it was merely his task to keep her train of thought moving.

"It's more than that." She drummed her fingers on the door panel a few times before she spoke again. "I can't imagine anyone has lived there in years. It's like…" He watched from the corner of his eye as the light came on in her face. "Like it's just a front room."

"A front room?"

"Yeah." Emily turned and asked him directly, "Didn't your mother have a room that no one actually used, except when you didn't want people to see-"

"To see the rest of the house." Dave slapped the steering wheel hard as Emily pulled out her cell phone. "Call Garcia."

"Hey, Garcia… Yeah, I do think he'd look pretty silly in one of those earflap hats." Emily rolled her eyes at the obvious Elmer Fudd reference from the irreverent technical analyst, but Dave could see the delight lurking in them. "Look, I need you to pull the records for that property. See if you can find any other structures having been built there, or any medium to large scale excavations that may have taken place."

She was quiet for a while, but Dave could hear the analyst's voice chirping out of the phone as they traveled down the road. Eventually, Emily was able to speak again. "Yeah, I understand, but just do what you can. We have some suspicions about the cabin and if you can-"

Emily was interrupted by the sound of her phone ringing again. "Hold on Penelope, it's Derek… Then tell him to hang up and put me on speaker, and I'll do the same."

Dave gave a quick nod of agreement when she waggled the phone at him and she flipped it on to speakerphone mode. "Okay, it's me and Dave, and we just asked Garcia to do a property records search to see if there are any other structures or any excavations that have taken place in the last three years. What have you got, Morgan?"

Morgan's voice came through the phone loud and clear. "Well, seeing as the scene techs haven't recovered a single fingerprint from inside the house, other than the sheriff's deputy and the daughter-in-law, and there's a lot more than six months worth of dust on everything… I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say, this is not where Gideon's been living."

Garcia left no room for Emily to even breathe before she chimed in as well, "And I just finished checking the heat signature readings and compared them to the land survey, and guess what…no match! I'm going to feed the scene techs these GPS calculations and have them find the actual house."

"Good deal, Garcia… Can you also give Hotch the heads up? Those guys are sifting through bogus evidence, and the real stuff has yet to be uncovered." Emily was quick on the draw to get the whole team back on task.

"Already done, my sweet. Text sent to J.J. while I waited for you all to finish jawing. She's putting Hotch and Reid in a SUV right now and hauling buns to Osage to meet up with you guys." Garcia was always efficient, but Dave never ceased to be surprised by just how well she was able to anticipate their needs. "And my dark knight companion is not saying good bye because he just took off like The Flash with the scene techs. Methinks they may have found the grail, my lovelies."

"Keep us updated, Garcia, and we'll get going on the interviews as soon as we hit beautiful downtown Osage."

Before Emily switched off the phone, Dave distinctly heard the analyst say, "Happy hunting, and don't take that left at Albuquerque."

Dave shook his head in disgust. "I will never believe that woman doesn't need a serious psych eval." Emily's delighted laughter filled the interior of the car. "Or at the very least a drug test."

"You just think that because Garcia is more woman than you could ever handle." Emily started flipping through the case file again when she looked away from him.

Dave nodded, knowing that Emily was absolutely correct in her assessment of his threshold for feminine wiles. "Yes, well, I'm fairly certain that I already have all the woman I can handle…and then some."

Her snort of laughter was exactly what he needed to hear as they pulled into town. They had several hours of interviews to get through, and knowing they were both relieved from the burden of tension was of great importance.

When he stopped the car in front of the sheriff's office, he knew it was time to get down to business. "Okay, small town in the middle of Idaho…"

"If you wanted to tick off the sheriff, I'd do the talking…so, you're gonna take point and make nice with the locals?" Emily winked at him to show she understood the situation.

"Thank you." He was about to get out of the car when he turned quickly back and touched her arm as he said, "Because…if this were anywhere else, I wouldn't have any prob-"

"Dave, it's fine, really." She laid her hand over his, reassuring him. "Seriously, I know what we're up against, and without this guy's help we're screwed. You make nice with the boys club and I'll take your notes like a good little girl."

The warmth in her smile was sincere and he nodded.

As they exited the car, the door to the sheriff's office swung open and every cliché about a backwoods lawman came strutting out of the building, complete with a protruding belly and mirrored highway patrol sunglasses. Looking over the top of his designer sunglasses, Rossi could see Emily struggling to keep her laughter in check.

"Well, well… If isn't the world famous author, himself. Super special agent Dave Rossi, here to set us backwater yokels straight on the ways of the _Eff Bee Eye_." In his youth, it would have taken everything in Dave's considerable power not to cut the over-stuffed, glorified security guard down to a manageable size. With time and experience, came wisdom, and so his only reaction was to smile politely.

"Sheriff." Dave nodded slightly to acknowledge the man, and to keep from calling him an insufferable bastard.

Without missing a beat, Emily stepped in and extended her hand to the man with a bright smile on her face. "Sheriff Lauder… Thank you very much for meeting with us today." The man turned an admiring eye in her direction and awkwardly shook her hand.

"I see you're already familiar with our Agent Rossi." She afforded Dave only the barest of glances before introducing herself. "I'm SSA Emily Prentiss, and I believe our liaison, Agent Jareau informed you that we'd be coming in, am I correct?" Emily slipped into the role of lead effortlessly, and quickly set the sheriff on his heels. It became crystal clear in their first exchange that while Idaho was a boys club, boys from the outside were considered a threat, but a strong, beautiful woman would always get their better sides.

"Ah, yeah, she did." The man's rancor was immediately defused by Emily's easy charm.

"Good, good…then you know we're only here to interview a few people as we investigate the disappearance of Agent Gideon." Dave had to hold back his smirk as Emily used every trick in their bag to engage the sheriff, much as they would with a suspect. That was where Emily shined the brightest, working the interrogation room. "We're not trying to step on any toes, Sheriff Lauder, but this is one of our own, and we have to be sure that he's gone of his own free will. You understand, don't you?"

"Yes, Ma'am… But I hope you can understand why we haven't taken any action on this so-called disappearance." The man was only trying to cover his own ass, but Dave still had no use for sloppy work.

"Of course. The circumstances led you to believe there was nothing amiss. Your conclusions were perfectly understandable, given the information available to you." Emily was playing to his ego perfectly, but Dave also knew she was setting him up for a fall. "But we have access to _other_ information, and _it_ leads us to believe we are dealing with something else entirely."

Dave was proud to see the sheriff shrink down all the bluster and escort the two of them into the county offices. Emily had managed to subdue the prickly law enforcement officer in under five minutes, and got his support for the interviews at the same time. She was good. Following her into the sheriff's office, he silently remarked to himself, _"She is very, very good."_


	5. Chapter 5

**AUTHOR:** LosingInTranslation (losingntrnslatn, Jennifer)  
**DISCLAIMER:** Don't own anything associated with the show… I just like playing with the characters in it from time to time. Dance Monkeys! Dance!  
**RATING:** T - Teen  
**SPOILERS:** Through US Aired Episodes of Season 4  
**WORD COUNT:** 1940  
**SUMMARY:** The BAU is asked to investigate an unusual missing persons case that has a very personal connection to the team.

**A/N:** This is one of those monster epics I am so well know for in the CSI fandom. It is completely written and I am going through the edits with my betas as quickly as possible. There are a total of nine chapters, and I will post them as I complete the edits. It is most definitely a case file fic, with a lot of interaction between the entire team. I hope you enjoy it.

**REVIEWS:** Reviews are the way I know if people are enjoying the work or not. So, if you leave one, THANKS! And if not, I hope you found at least a little something to brighten your day, and thanks for taking the time to read.

**

* * *

**

**Chapter 5**

After dropping J.J. off in town to help with the interviews and the locals, Aaron drove the rest of the way to Gideon's compound with Reid. It was a silent trip, with Reid only staring out the window at the passing scenery. Aaron wanted to inquire about his state of mind, but he knew Reid needed to make the first move if he was going to maintain even the illusion of control over the situation.

Sometimes being a profiler was a frustrating world to live in. Knowing so many of the answers before the questions were even asked, understanding that the questions themselves were meaningless, was a horrible burden. But knowing that at the end of the case, regardless of the outcome, one of their team members was going to be completely devastated was more than anyone should have to bear silently.

"Reid… if things get too intense out there, I could send you back to the office with the field agents." Aaron took the supervisor route. Keeping things professional was a common tactic for him when the job got to be too much.

"I'll be fine, Hotch. Honest." Reid's voice was distant, and Aaron knew it was nothing more than a shield.

"Fine." Aaron left it at that. There was only so far he could push before Reid would close himself off entirely. Unceremoniously changing the subject, Aaron asked, "How much further until the next turn?"

Reid finally turned away from the window and began scanning through the GPS navigation system. "Looks like it's approximately seven point three six miles until you veer right at the fork in the road, onto U.S. Forest Service Road 78."

Aaron was unable to hold in his chuff of amusement. "Approximately?"

Normally Aaron's slip would have been enough to break the dam, but not this time. Reid only shrugged and went back to staring out the window.

As Aaron concentrated on the road, he thought about the result of Gideon's previous meltdown. It was Aaron's responsibility to clear Gideon for field work again and after his final departure, he was left to wonder if he had been wrong in his assessment of the man.

Before he had a chance to delve much deeper into his own competence, Reid's cellphone started to ring. Reaching for the device in his jacket, he activated the speakerphone. "Reid," he snapped.

"Welcome to Camp Middle of Nowhere!"

Reid cleared his throat, "Ah, Garcia… You're on speaker."

"Of course I am, Poindexter. But it's just you and Hotch, so all is right with the world, my darlings." Garcia truly was like an acid laced ray of sunshine in their lives, reminding them with only her presence that life went on.

"What's going on, Garcia?" Aaron could tell Reid was anxious as he spoke.

"Just had the two of you pop up on my radar and I wanted to warn you not to trust the GPS for the turn. There's no fork, it's more like a spider web. You'll actually go forward through the intersection, with splinters to either side of you." As soon as she finished talking, they came upon the intersection. And exactly as Garcia described, they proceeded forward, with splinters on either side.

"Thanks for the heads up, Garcia…" Reid paused and audibly gulped before he asked, "Is there anything new yet?"

"Sorry, honey pie, but the field techs just got back from the bunker. I'm good, but even I need a little more time to make the magic happen." Reid was crestfallen by her comments. "But don't you worry, Dr. Re-delicious, if there is anything to uncover, you know I have the right tools for the job."

"Thanks, Garcia." Aaron watched as Reid switched the phone off and turned once again to the window. There was nothing out there to see, but Reid was transfixed.

There was nothing left to say. Aaron would keep his eye on Reid while they worked the house, and at the first sign of trouble, he would get Morgan to take him back to the office. No one would like it, but it was often his job to do the unpopular thing. He never took their anger personally, because someone had to be the bad guy in order to insure their team's survival. He was used to being that bad guy.

When they finally arrived on the scene, Aaron watched as Reid immediately walked into the false house. Morgan had already briefed him on the first house, and he knew there was little harm in allowing Reid that momentary escape. Instead, Aaron went in search of the lead crime scene technician.

"SSA Hotchner." The technician called out to him the moment he entered the tent. "We've been expecting you, Sir. Agent Morgan's been keeping us very busy, though."

"That's good to hear." Aaron shook the man's outstretched hand. "Also good to see you here, Wally. Only the best, right?"

"Appreciate you saying so, Sir. We all owe Jason Gideon a lot, so you pretty much had your pick of scene techs on this one." That was the reason Aaron wanted Wally when he requested his crew. He was from the old school of thought, yet managed to always keep ahead of the curve on techniques. Wally Hansen and his team would literally be able to find the needle in the haystack, and pull a usable print from it and the piece of straw next to it.

Aaron nodded to show his appreciation and then asked, "What do you have so far?"

"Right…" Wally pulled a clipboard off the table and started running down the list. "In this place, we got nothing. No prints, no DNA, no nothin'." He made a disgusted noise from his throat and continued, "Other than about a year's worth of dust and the daughter-in-law's prints on the outside of the door, we didn't get a thing from that place. You know how hard it is process the dummy house of someone this familiar with forensics?"

"I can only imagine, Wally. But at least it did tell us it wasn't his real home. Can you imagine now why the locals were so convinced it was nothing?" In his job, it paid for Aaron to be good at communicating with people from all walks of life. With Wally he was more familiar to make the man comfortable, which made it easier for him to communicate openly with a superior.

"Yeah… I bet they were scratching their heads, big time. But your agents immediately spotted the trouble. And that Garcia…" Wally whistled softly to show how impressed he was with Garcia's prowess. "That's one seriously well put together technical analyst, Agent Hotchner."

"Garcia is definitely one of a kind." Aaron had to work very hard to keep his normally stoic expression in place as they discussed Garcia's finer attributes. "Thankfully, she's one of a kind. Even better that she also works for us."

"Oh yeah. Wouldn't want that one working against me, that's for sure." He picked up another clipboard and handed it to Aaron. "She's managed to crack all the frequencies for the alarms, so we can at least hear ourselves think now. And she got your Agent Morgan to that bunker out there. Plus she was able to able to help my techs crack the passcode on the door."

"Have they finished clearing the bunker?" Aaron reviewed the items on the clipboard as he questioned Wally.

"Yeah, Morgan and the other field agents entered, found nothing, and then released it for processing. My techs are combing through that whole thing right now. There won't be an uncollected speck of dust when they get done." Wally was quite proud of his team and it showed.

"Anything of interest?" Aaron got down to business and Wally kicked it into gear.

"You could say that." He held up a stack of print cards. "We printed everything and got a lot of usable latents. Your analyst is processing the first half as we speak."

"Excellent… What else?"

"That's where it starts to get interesting." Aaron looked up from the clipboard to see Wally retrieve a large envelope from an evidence box. "We collected some hair samples from the bunker."

"If he was living there, that's to be expected." Aaron was slightly confused about why the hair samples would be interesting.

"Yeah, well, what we found isn't what we were expecting…" He pulled two evidence bindles out of the large envelope and handed one to Aaron. "That's the first sample. Got it from the bathroom sink."

Aaron flipped the bindle over and found what looked like discarded whiskers from an electric shaver. "Color is consistent with Agent Gideon."

"Yup, and we got this one from the bedroom." He handed over the second bindle and laughed. "Guy's living in a bunker, but he's got a giant antique bed bigger than my first apartment in there. And overstuffed leather chairs, bookshelves everywhere, as well as a fully equipped kitchen…in what's essentially a couple of government surplus pill-box bunkers."

Aaron knew, even before those hair samples could be sent for DNA testing, that bunker belonged to Jason. No other person would live in such stark contrasts. "Okay, so these both appear to be consistent with Gideon's hair. Where's the intrigue?"

Wally withdrew yet another bindle and handed it over to Aaron. "That would be this one…also recovered from the bedroom."

Aaron turned the bindle over and found several long, dark strands of hair. "You found these in the bedroom?"

"More accurately…in the bed." Aaron looked up from the bindle and Wally handed him a fourth one, which contained a tape lifted sample of mixed hairs. With crystal clarity he had just learned the stark truth; there was a woman.

He was stopped from asking any other questions when Reid came into the tent talking. "Hotch, there's something in the house you should see." Aaron paused for half a second, but it was obviously long enough to alert Reid to a problem. "What's wrong? Hotch…what is it?"

He was able to give Wally enough of a glare to silence the man, and then he regarded Reid. "Just some conflicting samples. What did you find?"

Thankfully Reid accepted his explanation and continued, "Well, it's hard to describe, you'll have to see for yourself."

He handed the samples back to Wally, who quickly sealed them up in the envelope and followed them into the house.

"It's right in here." Reid led them into the kitchen. "I probably wouldn't have noticed it, but…I'm allergic to the stuff, so I can pick it out of any room. I can even tell the difference between it and nutmeg."

"What Reid?" Aaron was confused by Reid's rambling.

"Annatto… It's a spice, used as a coloring agent, much the same as Paprika. It bears a striking similarity to common nutmeg, but has a slightly peppery flavor to it. It is found primarily in the tropical Americas. It's most prevalent use is in Cuban cuisine." Reid gestured for Wally to hand him one of his latex gloves and then slipped one finger into the glove before running it along the inner edge of the gas stove burner.

When he brought his finger up to show Aaron and Wally, it was colored red on the end. "There's not a lot of it, but obviously whoever cleaned up the place didn't think to get all the way down inside the stove."

He took off the glove, turning it inside out as he did, before he gave it back to Wally. "Hotch, _someone_ was living in this house…and they were cooking Cuban food on this stove."


	6. Chapter 6

**AUTHOR:** LosingInTranslation (losingntrnslatn, Jennifer)  
**DISCLAIMER:** Don't own anything associated with the show… I just like playing with the characters in it from time to time. Dance Monkeys! Dance!  
**RATING:** T - Teen  
**SPOILERS:** Through US Aired Episodes of Season 4  
**WORD COUNT:** 2562  
**SUMMARY:** The BAU is asked to investigate an unusual missing persons case that has a very personal connection to the team.

**A/N:** This is one of those monster epics I am so well know for in the CSI fandom. It is completely written and I am going through the edits with my betas as quickly as possible. There are a total of nine chapters, and I will post them as I complete the edits. It is most definitely a case file fic, with a lot of interaction between the entire team. I hope you enjoy it.

**REVIEWS:** Reviews are the way I know if people are enjoying the work or not. So, if you leave one, THANKS! And if not, I hope you found at least a little something to brighten your day, and thanks for taking the time to read.

**

* * *

**

**Chapter 6**

Too much time in the cramped quarters of the FBI field service van with the tech team's supervisor breathing down her neck finally took its toll on Penelope's nerves. Completely taking over the tech room at the Coeur D'Alene field office helped a little, but she decided nothing was really going to get better until they found Agent Gideon.

Before leaving the compound, Penelope scanned all of the print cards into the computer and sent them off to the print analysis unit at Quantico to run them through all the databases. In the meantime, she was keeping herself busy tracking the money trail. Missing person cases, especially when the person disappeared themselves, always came down to the money.

The money was easy to follow, when you knew what you were doing. And no one knew that better than Penelope Garcia. She tracked down the Mexican accounts Gideon shared with his son, the Bahamian bank the money from his U.S. accounts was transferred into, and even the dummy corporate account at the credit union in Spokane from which Steven Degault paid his expenses. Penelope was actually impressed with the way Gideon had hidden his money, and that rarely happened for her.

The frustrating part of the whole exercise was waiting for the evidence to be processed, Penelope was used to instant information gratification, and patience was not a word in her vocabulary. Penelope hated waiting for anything. She had already gone so far as to get Kevin to use his CIA contacts to help speed up the DNA analysis, but she was still left waiting for something to pop.

She was rescued from the boredom by the sound of an incoming call. A quick check of the caller ID made her smile. "You have reached the Queen of Information, speak and you shall be heard. Talk dirty and you'll also get an answer."

"I don't know any other way to talk to a hot mama such as yourself." There was no doubt about it; Derek Morgan was good for a girl's ego.

"Just for that, you get two questions answered. Talk to me, sweet stuff."

"We just got done at the compound, and we're on our way to meet up with Rossi and Prentiss." She could hear Reid and Hotch in the background and knew that she was once again on speakerphone.

"This is sounding decidedly un-naughty… What's up, buttercup?" Penelope knew when it was time to get down to business.

"Have you had any luck with those unidentified prints?"

"Oh, that's a question you didn't want to ask if you were looking for good news."

Reid jumped into the conversation with disbelief. "How is that possible? There were no matches at all?"

"I said no such thing, Junior Ranger, but so far, everything else has come back to Gideon, the daughter-in-law or the cops." Her caller ID chirped with an incoming call. "Hold on, more subjects for the Queen."

Penelope clicked the call from Agent Rossi's phone into a conference with the others. "The Queen of Information will take your call. Speak, and share your knowledge with her minions."

"Hey, Penelope." It was Emily's voice, which made Penelope smile. They must have mixed up their phones again. "We just finished our interviews in the town and wanted to check in with you for a status update."

"As I was just informing the delightful agents Hotchner, Morgan and Reid… Wow, that sounds like a bad ass law firm, doesn't it?" Penelope used a split second to conjure up that scenario in her head and then got back down to business. "So, yeah, the only prints to match up are the cops, Gideon's and the daughter-in-law's. But I still have some that are coming up empty. I have them running on two more databases, but so far they're still the guest star to be named later." Penelope checked both monitors to see if anything had popped yet, but to no avail. "You don't happen to have a suspect to compare them with, do you?"

"Sadly, no, but Rossi and Prentiss got a description from the locals about a fine young honey that started showing her face a while back. She hasn't been seen since Gideon did his latest vanishing act." Derek always had a way with words, but Penelope had no time to play with him.

"Seriously?" Penelope was shocked to hear that. "Wow, I never thought Gideon would be swimming in the kiddie pool."

"I wouldn't go that far. They just said she was younger, probably mid-thirties." Emily sounded a little defensive, but Penelope just chalked it up to a little transference going on.

"Whatever…" Penelope quickly changed the subject. "What are your plans for food? Because I've been cooped up inside SUVs, vans and another analyst's room all freaking day and I need some social interaction and food that doesn't come out of a vending machine. Comprenez mes amours?"

"I'm feelin' ya, Baby Girl. Why don't you find us a nice quiet out of the way place we can meet up and talk this thing out." Derek's amused laughter filtered in through her headset, instantly bringing a smile to her face.

"Already done, my fine muscled friend… Sending the coordinates to your GPS as we speak." With several quick keystrokes, Penelope fed the address into the navigation computers and activated the directions from their current locations.

She had just enough time to load everything they needed into her FBI issue laptop before the troops arrived. And the time she spent waiting for the transfer could be used having a nice little private chat with Kevin on her own laptop.

Penelope arrived at the restaurant ahead of the team and secured the back room for the group. While nothing in the case had reached the top of the squick meter yet, there was no telling where the conversation could go, and it was better for the other patrons not to be subjected to it.

The waiter and the manager had just finished rearranging the tables and chairs when Derek came strutting into the room. "When I said quiet and out of the way, I wasn't expecting anything like this."

His arms outstretched, gesturing at the private room brought a wicked smile to her face. "Hey, you know I treat my baby right."

They all filed in after that, with Emily and Rossi curiously last to the restaurant. Penelope checked her watch and asked, "What took you so long? By my calculations you should have been here first?"

Rossi very quickly dismissed her question. "Had to drop the interview recordings off at the field office first, and then stopped for fuel." Everyone nodded at his explanation as the two took seats at opposite ends of the table and their conversations soon filled with small talk as they waited.

Once the meal was under way, they started talking out the case. Penelope was always surprised by the way each of their minds worked. Reid and Hotchner were methodical and pragmatic, while Derek did his best to put himself in the mind of the unsub. J.J. always sat back and listened to the whole thing, taking it in, and only speaking up when she had a question, which often helped everyone see it from a different angle. Emily was more of a holistic investigator; observing, learning, turning it all over in her mind, playing the devil's advocate, until she finally had the answer she needed to be able to act, because action was what she wanted more than anything. Penelope was still trying to understand Rossi, but even she could see that he was the most well-rounded agent in the whole BAU. And yet, though he was getting better, he was still handicapped by falling back into his reliance on the old ways, and his sometimes desperate need to do things on his own.

These incredibly diverse people, these wonderful minds, these brave souls, they were more than her co-workers. As they sat around the tables, chewing on the facts as much as the food, struggling to find the answers to Jason Gideon's second vanishing act, Penelope truly understood who these people really were.

They were her family.

"Okay, we've got two very distinct homes. One has been practically sterilized from all traces of human existence, save for Reid's little discovery and some random household paperwork the field unit pulled from the office." Emily worked through her recap.

"A bunker that screams Gideon on the inside, but the outside is right out of Patriots-R-Us Surplus." Morgan injected his brand of analysis into the mix. "And all of his things left in place, like he just went out for a stroll in the woods."

Rossi picked up from there. "A town that barely saw the man. His monthly trips to the post office and general store were so uneventful we couldn't even get a consistent description from the store's owners."

"I found it curious that there were prints left on the outside of the main house, but everything on the inside was scrubbed down with an almost clinical efficiency. And yet, the bunker clearly had not undergone any kind of rigorous cleaning." Reid began to drone through his own analysis, and Penelope distracted herself with the latest results streaming into her computer from the field lab.

"It was almost as though the first house had been vacated some time ago, and all activity moved to the bunker. You can actually see the patched holes in the wall of the main house where the bookcases used to stand. Like Gideon was methodically pulling himself away from the last vestiges of civilization. The excessive amount of security is a secondary indicator of his degradation into a state of aberrant paranoia."

J.J. asked, "If that's the secondary, then what's the primary indicator?"

"The great lengths he went to in order to completely disappear from sight. Breaking the promise to his son was the final step in that process." The despair in Reid's voice was evident to everyone around the table.

"Reid…do you really think Gideon just walked away?" Derek asked, his voice heavy with concern.

"I think the evidence and his past behavior very clearly indicate that conclusion, don't you?" Reid's face was carefully blank as he delivered his final analysis.

"Let's not forget that there is an unidentified woman, described only as white, though possibly Hispanic, attractive with long dark hair. She was only seen once or twice by each person and by no one in the months following Jason's disappearance." Hotch was all business.

"Where does the unidentified woman or the hair samples fit into your theory?" Rossi was doing his best to counter Reid's argument.

"What hair samples?" The surprise in Reid's face made everyone cringe as they turned to Hotch.

"I was waiting until the analysis could be performed…" Hotch swallowed hard as he went on to explain the evidence to Reid. "The field unit found several samples of hair inconsistent with any known person."

"Where were they found?" Reid was not about to let him off easy.

"They were, ah… They were found primarily in the bedroom, Reid." Reid's face shifted from shock, to disbelief, to understanding, all in the blink of an eye.

Eventually Derek noticed that Penelope was not really paying attention to the rest of them, and he used the opportunity to deflect the attention away from Reid. "What's got all your attention over there, Baby Girl?"

Penelope shook her head as she continued to stare at the still unidentified prints. "These prints, they just aren't adding up."

Derek wiped his mouth with the napkin before asking, "What's wrong with them?"

"Well, the whorls, it's like they've been jumbled up, or altered somehow."

Reid slipped on his glasses and moved closer to her when he asked, "How do you mean?"

"Well, look…" She enlarged the most distinctive print one hundred times and flipped the screen around for everyone to see. At that level of magnification, even Mr. Magoo could see what she was talking about. "Can you see the lines? It's like they're cutting through the ridge detail on this one."

"That's scarring." Emily looked a little closer and then it appeared as though a light bulb went on over her head. "Garcia, have the print lab isolate the sections between those scars and run them as partial prints, instead of as a whole."

When everyone looked to her clarification, she only shrugged and answered, "My mother was posted to eastern Europe for a while… It's a common trick in the crime rings there. Slicing up their finger pads repeatedly in order to avoid a print match. Interpol and the local authorities finally figured out that if they ran the pieces of the prints as partials, they got a hit every time."

"Agent Prentiss gets a gold star for that one!" Penelope immediately isolated several significant portions of the unidentified prints and sent them back to her friends at Langley to run them through the system on a high priority scan. "If this works… We should have an answer back in the next hour, max."

The team got back to their dinners and the post mortem for the day, forgetting all about the print results for a while. Usually when someone said they would get results in an hour, everyone knew that really meant an hour in government time, which could equal three or four hours in real time.

Just as Hotch reached across the table for the check, Penelope's computer and his phone went off in sequence. She looked at the screen and found only a security warning for an administrative password request. Penelope looked up from the screen, "Um… This can't be good, huh?"

Hotch looked at the display screen on his phone and narrowed his gaze. "No, it can't."

He flipped open the phone. "SSA Hotchner… Yes, Ma'am… No, I understand… I have a laptop right here…" He gestured for Penelope to get ready to enter a code. "Capital echo, one, five, niner, alpha, delta, ampersand, bravo, two, zero."

After entering the code precisely as Hotch called it out, Penelope found another administrative screen glaring at her. "Now where?"

"Secure priority message center…" As she clicked on the screen she found a message titled "Priority Flag Hit - Internal Investigation #SSA-EG0023-BAU." Hotch was standing over her shoulder and she heard him say, "That's the one, Garcia. Would you excuse me, please?"

Penelope did her best to hop out of the way and Hotch swiftly slid into her seat to view the new message. After a few more keystrokes on her computer, he was finally bringing the message into view. For a moment she thought she needed to turn away from the screen, but then he asked her to look closer. "Come in here… They've ID'd the partials, and the ID came back to a high-priority flagged entry." He turned to Penelope with a stern expression on his face as he explained, "A file that was flagged by you, for me."

A huge lump rose in Penelope's throat, because she knew there were only two files Hotch had ever asked her to flag. One was Agent Gideon, and the other…

He twisted the screen around to show everyone else as the file came into view. With a gasp, she heard the name spoken softly in several voices: "Elle."


	7. Chapter 7

**AUTHOR:** LosingInTranslation (losingntrnslatn, Jennifer)  
**DISCLAIMER:** Don't own anything associated with the show… I just like playing with the characters in it from time to time. Dance Monkeys! Dance!  
**RATING:** T - Teen  
**SPOILERS:** Through US Aired Episodes of Season 4  
**WORD COUNT:** 2150  
**SUMMARY:** The BAU is asked to investigate an unusual missing persons case that has a very personal connection to the team.

**A/N:** This is one of those monster epics I am so well know for in the CSI fandom. It is completely written and I am going through the edits with my betas as quickly as possible. There are a total of nine chapters, and I will post them as I complete the edits. It is most definitely a case file fic, with a lot of interaction between the entire team. I hope you enjoy it.

**REVIEWS:** Reviews are the way I know if people are enjoying the work or not. So, if you leave one, THANKS! And if not, I hope you found at least a little something to brighten your day, and thanks for taking the time to read.

**

* * *

**

**Chapter 7  
**

Spencer was still trying to put all of the pieces together when they decided to pack it up and head back to Quantico. There was nothing more they could do in Idaho, and there were other cases that needed more immediate attention. It was still a priority case for them, but until the DNA results came back, or Garcia was able to find Elle, they were at a dead end with the case. For the moment, Gideon was just another missing person.

The entire flight back to Quantico was uncharacteristically quiet. Everyone was feeling the strain of their discovery, even Emily and Rossi, who had never met Elle. It was difficult to put into words exactly how the news was affecting everyone, because each person had their connection to the case, and the people in it.

Morgan and Rossi were over in the booth with Emily quietly discussing the basics of a missing persons case. There was nothing earth shattering about the conversation, just a group of colleagues trying to distance themselves from the truth with facts and figures.

"Well, the majority of cases involve juveniles. They represented ninety four percent of the more than nine hundred thousand cases last year." Rossi's always even tone lent some stability in the middle of the chaos swirling in Reid's mind.

"Which means there were more than fifty thousand cases involving adults last year. But you have to remember that number also includes people who are missing as a result of mental or physical illness, as well as transient lifestyle choices. A junkie stops showing up for methadone treatments or a senior wanders off in confusion and that's a part of those statistics." Emily, as always, tried to bring a human element into the conversation.

Morgan nodded and then added his wisdom to the discussion. "Right, so with all of that, you're looking at a very small number of true missing persons when it comes to adults; especially when you factor in substance abuse and folks who simply walk away from a bad situation."

From the other side of the jet, behind the folder he was reviewing, Hotch injected another statistic. "In fact, out of all the missing persons cases in a single year, there are only ten percent which can be classified as truly missing. The other ninety percent are listed as located, with only one to two percent of those actually resulting in a fatality."

Spencer tried to focus on the optimism in Hotch's words, but it was hard. With any case, the longer it drags out, the less likely a satisfactory conclusion occurs. And although only ten percent of missing persons cases remained unsolved, with no investigation beginning in Gideon's case until six months after the fact, Spencer was still pessimistic about the outcome. At the moment, the most he thought they could hope for was that the case remained an open cold investigation.

However, that was not the most troubling thing about the case for him. He often tried to dispel the idea that he was a genius, because in his experience it made people treat him differently. But it also came from the fact that in many areas of human interaction, he knew he was greatly deficient. This case had proven it to him once again, with perfect clarity. He simply did not understand how Elle could have been involved with Gideon's disappearance. But it was her apparent involvement with Gideon himself that left him thoroughly baffled. Despite their previous history, he had been completely blind to anything which might have led to their involvement.

His hand clutched tightly around the spine of his book, Spencer struggled to understand the scenario as it presented to him. His imagination failed to give him any insight for the justification of that relationship, and he suddenly felt like the kid who just found out the stork was a lie and his parents were having sex.

Trying to sort it all out in his head, he missed J.J. getting up from her seat and slowly making her way over to him. As she slipped into the seat beside him, he knew his silence was over.

"Spence…how're you holding up?" The tilt of her head and the tone of her voice told Spencer just how concerned she was with his well-being. He hated to make her worry, but his confusion made it hard to play it off. Dr. Spencer Reid was not used to being confused…about anything.

He turned to look into her eyes and then shook his head. "I can honestly say…I don't know how I am right now."

J.J. nodded, sighed and settled back into the seat, gently resting against his side. It felt good to have someone feel that comfortable around him. But it was even better that it was J.J.

His relationship with J.J. was unconventional. He was a grown man and a genius, but he came face to face with a serious schoolboy crush on her. Her personality, coupled with her beauty, kept him tied up in knots for longer than he liked to admit. Spencer was intrigued by a woman he could feel comfortable around, and he confused that intrigue with true attraction. Thankfully for him, J.J. was always gracious about his initial misconceptions, and their relationship quickly transformed into a very close friendship.

In many ways, J.J. became the sister Spencer never had. She looked out for him, and tried to help steer him in the ways of normal, non-genius humans. J.J. was the true source of his education in humanity. She showed him how to connect with the emotions his pure reason and logic often obscured. As a result, she was also the one person he could never hide his humanity from. J.J. always knew.

"Kind of out of the blue, huh?" He could tell she was trying to take his temperature about the recent turn of events. He wanted to tell her that he understood what happened, that he could make sense of it, that he was not completely devastated by the news. But the truth was right there on his face, and not even his mother, in her most delusional episode, could miss it.

"Yeah." His answer was plain, but its simplicity spoke volumes about where his head was.

He felt her head turn and Spencer knew she was looking at Hotch. She was worried about him as well. J.J. worried about everyone, but for some reason he and Hotch always seemed to be at the top of her list. Knowing why she worried about him, Spencer assumed her concern for Hotch stemmed from the close working relationship between them. But he also knew he was deficient in understanding the inner workings of the female brain, outside the realm of sociopathy.

"Did you know they were, you know, _communicating_?" Spencer only stared into the empty space across from him after J.J. asked the question everyone was dying to know.

Long ago, he deduced that everyone assumed Jason was keeping in contact with him. The truth of the matter was Jason had cut Spencer off even before he left him the letter at the old cabin. It was why he went looking for him. That was why Jason knew it would be him to go looking. The letter was his last goodbye, thus fulfilling his promise to Reid.

Knowing Spencer's issues regarding feelings of abandonment from his parents (both as the one left behind, and the one leaving), Jason made a promise to him; he would never leave him without a word. And true to his word, that was exactly what Jason had done with his letter.

Spencer let his silence be the answer to J.J.'s question. She took the cue and only nodded.

Absently, his fingers began to trace the spine of his book and J.J. looked down. He knew she would understand the significance of the book on Chaucer, and he tried to obscure the title with his hand. "You know, we really don't have anything conclusive, yet. So…maybe this time you don't let that big brain of yours get too far ahead of the evidence…okay?"

He nodded, but it was already too late. He was already thinking about all the things he might have done differently, trying to recount exactly what had gone wrong and everything that would have led to such an outcome.

"Spencer… I'm serious." She nudged him to emphasize her point. "There's no point in you trying to find the blame in this, when we don't even know what, if anything has happened." Her stern expression quickly melted when he turned to look at her. "So, knock it off, all right?"

He tried very hard to let it go, if for only a moment, to ease her mind. Spencer screwed his mouth up into an awkward grin and nodded. "All right… I'll try."

J.J. bumped him with her shoulder once again and smiled softly. "I guess that's as much as I can hope for…for now." He did his best to return the smile, but she placed her hand over his on the book and looked him dead in the eye when she asked, "Just promise me one thing…" He was powerless to refuse her when she got serious like that, and so he merely nodded. "You'll let the team help you through this one…no shutting us out?"

Spencer looked away from her steady gaze and down at their hands. He thought for a moment about how small her hand looked against his, and how much smaller still Henry's appeared in comparison. His hands were so much bigger than both of theirs, even put together, but theirs were the hands that held him together when things got rough. And he was so very grateful to have J.J. in his life.

He placed his other hand over hers and squeezed gently. Nodding his head, he whispered, "I promise, J.J. I promise."

When they finally got back to headquarters, there was no time to collect their selves before Director Strauss had them in the briefing room giving her the complete rundown on the case information. She explained that there was a great deal of pressure to reach a satisfactory conclusion in the case, and she was giving them as much time as possible to achieve it.

As everyone broke up after the debriefing, Spencer thought they would all pack up and head home. But it appeared no one was ready to call it quits just yet. Morgan and Emily were going through their notes together. J.J. was in her office going through the written requests having arrived while they were in Idaho. Hotch and Rossi were doing their own post mortem in Hotch's office. And when Garcia disappeared, he deduced she had gone to reclaim her domain and check for any further test results.

He had no desire to rehash the details of the case with anyone again. He was done. Spencer wanted, more than anything, to completely forget the events of the past few days, but it was all he could think about. Worse yet, he knew there was only one person who would be able to answer any of the hundreds of questions bouncing around inside his head. And she was not in Quantico.

His bag still resting on his shoulder, Spencer walked to Hotch's office. Without knocking, he stepped inside, interrupting Rossi in mid-platitude. "Hotch… I'm leaving."

Hotch nodded at him as Rossi spun in his seat to look at Spencer. "Good… You need to get some sleep. It will still be a while before we get any test results." He narrowed his gaze at Hotch as he rambled on, not understanding what Spencer was trying to say. "Garcia should have some leads for us to hunt down tomorrow."

Spencer shook his head as Hotch went back to the folder on his desk. "No, you aren't understanding me…" Hotch looked up from the paperwork that formerly held his attention. "I'm leaving."

Still confused, they both stared at Spencer and waited for him to explain. Instead of an explanation, he simply pulled his gun and credentials out of his bag and stepped up to Hotch's desk, laying them gently atop the files there before walking out.

**_OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO_**

Taking a deep breath, he straightened the bag over his shoulder and did his best to steady his nerves. This was quite possibly the most difficult thing he had ever done in his life, but he needed to know.

With one more steeling breath, he raised his hand to the door. Closing his eyes, he knocked three times, paused, and knocked one last time..

The door was opened after a few short moments to reveal a familiar face wearing an odd smile. "Dr. Spencer Reid… I should've known it'd be you."

"Elle…" He swallowed hard, knowing that everything in his life was about to be turned inside out. "We need to talk."


	8. Chapter 8

**AUTHOR:** LosingInTranslation (losingntrnslatn, Jennifer)  
**DISCLAIMER:** Don't own anything associated with the show… I just like playing with the characters in it from time to time. Dance Monkeys! Dance!  
**RATING:** T - Teen  
**SPOILERS:** Through US Aired Episodes of Season 4  
**WORD COUNT:** 1416  
**SUMMARY:** The BAU is asked to investigate an unusual missing persons case that has a very personal connection to the team.

**A/N:** This is one of those monster epics I am so well know for in the CSI fandom. It is completely written and I am going through the edits with my betas as quickly as possible. There are a total of nine chapters, and I will post them as I complete the edits. It is most definitely a case file fic, with a lot of interaction between the entire team. I hope you enjoy it.

**REVIEWS:** Reviews are the way I know if people are enjoying the work or not. So, if you leave one, THANKS! And if not, I hope you found at least a little something to brighten your day, and thanks for taking the time to read.

**

* * *

**

**Chapter 8  
**

Opening the door with a push, Elle rolled her eyes and begrudgingly waved him inside. "You came all this way…might as well come inside."

Spencer cautiously stepped forward and glanced around the room. "Thank you."

Elle huffed at his obvious curiosity. "Go ahead…look around. I'll get us some drinks." She went to the kitchen while Spencer tried to decide if he should take her up on the offer.

As the sound of ice falling into glasses reached him, he chose to take a seat in the living room instead. "I just came here to talk."

When she entered the room with two glasses of iced tea, Elle was shaking her head. "I'll admit I'm kind of surprised Hotchner didn't just send the marshals in first."

"It's just me." Setting his bag down in his lap, Spencer answered her attack. "Nothing official." As he took the glass from her hand, he concluded, "I came here on my own."

She eyed him suspiciously and took her seat on the sofa. With a faint smile playing on her lips, she leaned back and crossed her legs. "You never told Hotch you knew where I was, did you?"

"I promised you I wouldn't."

"Promises." She sneered at his answer. "You people and your _promises_."

Spencer sighed with the weight of his knowledge and her insinuation. "In the end…the only thing that's truly yours is your word."

Elle turned and placed the glass on the side table. "In my experience…in the end…it just isn't enough." When she turned back to face him, her expression had turned to stone; cold, hard and completely devoid of human emotion. "Promises, like people, never last."

"What's happened to you, Elle?" If not for the deep sincerity in his voice, she might have laughed at his question.

Instead, she used her dark humor to deflect it. "You mean other than being gutted and left for dead?"

"We weren't the ones who left you." Her surprise at hearing his statement showed on her face. "You left us." Elle's expression clearly demonstrated her desire to slap him for that, but his follow up left her gasping. "You left me."

"Spencer, I-…" The words caught in her throat.

"Don't…it's not important now." His dismissal was worse than his accusation. "I came here to give you a chance to explain."

The steel was back in her gaze when she asked, "Explain what?"

"Don't play that game with me, Elle. I helped teach it to you." Spencer was deadly serious. "Tell me what happened with Gideon."

And with that, the real game was on. She relaxed into the sofa and kicked her foot in a playful rhythm. "What would you like to hear first, _Dr. Reid_? The quiet nights on the sofa? Or how about the hot afternoons in his bed? Tell me, Spencer, what exactly do you want know about _me_ and Gideon?"

"Stop it…" He shook his head, as though it would help dispel the graphic images she tried to implant there. Elle was trying to deflect his attention by using his eidetic and visual memory against him, but she forgot who she was dealing with. "I don't deserve that."

She stopped bouncing her foot and sat forward. "I'm sorry. I don't want to hurt you, Spencer. But these questions…they'll only make it worse. Just leave it alone."

Resignation heavy in his voice, Spencer answered, "But I need to know."

"No, no you don't." Elle seemed to withdraw from him with her refusal. "You don't _need_ to know any of this."

He nodded carefully, knowing she spoke the truth. "Fine…but I want the answers anyway. If for nothing else, so that I can understand what happened."

"There's nothing to understand." Her anger began to surface when he refused to give in.

"Let me be the judge of that. Tell me what happened, Elle. Make me understand this madness, please?" He was not going to let her off without the answers he had come for.

She wanted to lash out at him in anger; anger for making her think about it, anger for bringing it all back. Elle knew it was only a matter of time, but it was still making her angry. "Why do you need to know about how he turned hyper-vigilance into a damn science; double checking every lock and never taking his eyes off those awful monitors? That's going to help you understand?"

"It won't, but maybe…I don't know. Maybe it can help me understand why, so that I can… So that I might be able to-" The words caught "in his throat and his mind struggled to find a valid reason for his need to know.

"Knowing Jason woke up screaming every night will put your mind at ease?" Elle grew more emotional with each question. Will it make it easier for you to know how alone he felt through all of it, even with his son…even when he was with me? How nothing took away his guilt, nothing cured his pain, nothing could give him peace, nothing but…"

"Why?" Spencer was horrified by her anger soaked questions as he choked out the words. "Why did you do it?"

Her answer was preempted when the condo door burst open and a swarm of U.S. Marshals filled the space, their guns drawn, their voices crowding out all other sound. They quickly hooked her up in shackles, and Elle glared at him with such an icy stare, Spencer could feel it in the base of his spine.

After they ushered her out the door, Hotch and Rossi filed into the room.

Spencer stood up and straightened his bag before speaking to the two men before him. "You had me followed?"

Before they could speak, J.J. came into the room holding his book on Chaucer. She looked away from his pained gaze and opened it to the inscription. "'Anger, sickness, or planetary influences, wine, sorrow, or changing of disposition often causes one to do or speak amiss. One cannot be avenged for every wrong; according to the occasion, everyone who knows how, must use temperance.' Spencer, thank you for your patience. Maybe one day I'll find the temperance in that quote. –Elle." She closed the book and woefully returned his gaze. "When you left this behind, I knew you were in trouble. I got the address from the letter you used as your bookmark." His eyes fell at her admission.

"But why the Marshals?"

Rossi nodded and softly admitted, "They found the body this morning, in an unmarked grave about a thousand yards from the first house. That was enough for an arrest warrant." When he saw the condition of the bunker house, Reid had known Jason was gone, but it was hard to hear the words spoken aloud.

"How did-…" He found it difficult to give voice to his conclusion. It was tough for him to imagine Elle as capable of murder, but knowing she could be responsible for Gideon's murder was too much.

"We're waiting for the autopsy to confirm…" Rossi paused when he saw Reid was not looking for a gentle explanation. "Small caliber gunshot wound in the back of the head."

Spencer closed his eyes tight, Rossi's words cut into him like a knife. "I just-… I can't believe I was so wrong."

"None of us could have seen this, Reid." Hotch put a hand on Spencer's shoulder. "It goes against everything we know as profilers. But the evidence doesn't lie."

Nodding solemnly, Spencer recited the same thing he had heard a million times before, "People lie, evidence just is what it is."

His words struck home with all of them. After a few moments of silence, J.J. looked at her watch and said, "We should get to the airport. The Marshals have to process her at their facility here in Seattle, but then they're taking the red-eye to D.C. If we're going to get any rest and be ready first thing in the morning, we need to leave now."

"Right… Thank you, J.J." Hotch moved as though he was about to leave and then he reached into his jacket pocket before he turned back to Reid. "I think you dropped this in my office." He casually slipped Reid's credentials into his hand.

Spencer felt his cheeks warm with his shame. With all his human deficiencies, he failed to see that even without Gideon, he was never really alone. He promised himself in that moment, he would never take the team for granted again.


	9. Chapter 9

**AUTHOR:** LosingInTranslation (losingntrnslatn, Jennifer)  
**DISCLAIMER:** Don't own anything associated with the show… I just like playing with the characters in it from time to time. Dance Monkeys! Dance!  
**RATING:** T - Teen  
**SPOILERS:** Through US Aired Episodes of Season 4  
**WORD COUNT:** 5130  
**SUMMARY:** The BAU is asked to investigate an unusual missing persons case that has a very personal connection to the team.

**A/N:** This is one of those monster epics I am so well know for in the CSI fandom. It is completely written and I am going through the edits with my betas as quickly as possible. There are a total of nine chapters, and I will post them as I complete the edits. It is most definitely a case file fic, with a lot of interaction between the entire team. I hope you enjoy it.

**REVIEWS:** Reviews are the way I know if people are enjoying the work or not. So, if you leave one, THANKS! And if not, I hope you found at least a little something to brighten your day, and thanks for taking the time to read.

**

* * *

**

**Chapter 9  
**

Elle was unceremoniously dumped in an interrogation room she had inhabited more times than she could begin to count. The same bare walls. The same two way mirrors. The same comm system. The same slick metal table. The only difference? She was the one shackled to the metal bar beneath the bolted down table. Looking down at the chair upon which she sat, she could not help but muse to herself, _For a hot seat, it sure is cold._

The Marshals had done their level best to keep her awake and agitated during the entire ordeal; from the arrest, to the processing, to the transport. They wanted her tired. They wanted her frustrated. They wanted her on the edge, if only so they could be the ones to push her over it.

They… Not so long ago she was part of _them_. It was _we_ back then. She always felt slightly out of place, not just because she was the newest member, but like she was never meant to be there. It made her work twice as hard to prove herself, but in the end, she found the truth. She had no business on that team.

Ambition was thought to be her biggest downfall at the BAU, but in reality it was the ghosts. The ghosts that had been her constant companions since childhood. The ghosts that continued to grow and multiply with every passing year. The ghosts that quickly took over her world when she was finally forced to come face to face with them after Randall Garner's attack on her.

She tried to fight her way back to the BAU, but she was really fighting herself. She should have taken the time to heal, both physically and emotionally. She should have listened to what everyone was saying, but just as she always had, she ignored those other voices and forged ahead. And then the Lee case came up.

The signs were all there. Hotchner was right about that. She was hyper-vigilant and she was on the edge. Reid catching her drinking should have sent up a warning flare, but instead she bullied and manipulated him into drinking with her. Everything she did during that time practically screamed at her to stop and take stock of her mental status. Instead, she agreed to act as bait for a sexual predator.

Before she even realized what was happening, she had her gun out and in the face of their suspect, completely destroying the case they were trying to build against him. But she never cared about the case. She only wanted to know who he was. She wanted settle the score alone. And that was exactly what she did.

After that, the only option she had left was to walk away. Walk away from the team, walk away from her work, and walk away from the only people to have ever shown her the slightest bit of human decency.

Taking a deep breath and straightening her back as she rounded her shoulders, Elle heard the clank of metal on metal as her shackles shifted with the movement. Staring into the mirrored glass, she tried to deduce exactly who was standing behind that glass watching her. Hotchner, for certain. And Reid, observing in the shadows, hoping not to be noticed, as always.

Would Hotch handle her interview? No, he would do what he always did and merely observe, passing judgment from afar. Morgan might have been a good choice, if not for the fact that she always bested him in a verbal skirmish. Spencer was rarely an asset in interviews, unless the subject was either completely out of their gourd, or too smart for anyone's good. And that left the two team members who joined after her departure: the unknown quantities.

Patience was never her strong suit, but a lot of things had changed since she left the BAU. Time to think used to be her enemy, but that was no longer true. The longer they left her there, alone with her thoughts, the more she was able to find her center. After more than an hour alone, chained to the table in the bare room, the door finally snicked open.

David Rossi she knew only by reputation. He was part of the original BAU team, and a card carrying member of the old boys' network at the FBI. She knew how to handle someone like him in her sleep. Watching the two of them enter the room in tandem, Rossi allowing the woman to enter first, she took in the silent communication between them and she had a pretty good idea why they were both in the room.

Elle kept her gaze fixed on the mirrored glass behind them, but noticed every move. How Rossi gave the woman space, nudging her chair away from the table without actually pulling it out for her, granting her that respect and independence from him, while still showing appreciation. She may not have been a profiler anymore, but Elle knew better than anyone how to spot the signs of intimacy.

The woman nodded at Rossi, and granted him the first introductions. "I'm Agent David Rossi, and this is Agent Emily Prentiss. Do you know why you are here Agent Green-"

"I'm not an agent. And you know that." She hated being condescended to, and the sneer on her lips was threatening to become a snarl. Using her previous position as a way to connect to her was nothing more than a ploy, and she hated it. "But yes…I know _why_ I'm here."

Rossi opened the folder in front of him, pretending to read something. "I see here that the Marshals informed you of your rights, and you waived your right to have an attorney present during this intervi-"

"Interrogation… Interviews don't include shackles." He spoke the lines as though they were straight out of Suspect Interviewing 101, and Elle was not about to let him play his coy little game.

He looked up from his paperwork with a raised eyebrow and she knew he was irritated by her interruptions, but he was not about to tell her that. "Do you still wish to speak without the aid of legal counsel, Ms. Greenaway?"

"I have no need for legal counsel." She kept her posture firmly upright, but not rigid. Her gaze was unwavering and she could tell David Rossi was not someone who flinched from a mere look. Elle liked that, because it meant the man was true to himself and his job.

Despite the counterfeit niceties he exhibited before, his ability to meet her icy stare told her that he was indeed the honest man she had been told about. "I think we've already wasted enough time, so why don't you just ask your questions and let's be done with this charade?"

Rossi rankled for a split second, probably taken aback by her flat tone and the lack of real emotion in her features. He stuck out his jaw a bit as he adjusted his neck and then agreed. "All right then, if that's the way you want to do it." He flipped a photograph across the table to land in front of her, but she kept her eyes locked on the pair. "Do you recognize this house?"

She waited for two more beats before moving her eyes down to glance at the picture. It had been a while since she last walked across the threshold of that place, but it still looked the same. "Yes, of course I do. I lived there, off and on, when I wasn't working, for about eight months."

Agent Prentiss slipped him another folder. As he opened it, she knew he was just putting on a show. She knew how it all worked; question, pause, review materials, question, gauge the response for continuation to question "a" or question "b," repeat. Maybe it was just habit for him, or maybe he was just trying to irritate her, but either way, she was not about to give him the satisfaction of allowing his behavior to provoke any kind of response. She was there to answer questions, and nothing more.

"Your work… It seems to consist of a lot of contracts and freelance work. Things that bring you in and out of the country." Rossi looked up from the pages to ask, "And yet your passport and your fingerprint records show you haven't left the country since your trip to Jamaica… Why is that?"

"The people I work with, and the people I work for are not exactly angels, and I prefer to keep my actual identity to myself. The places I travel wouldn't think very highly of any fed, regardless of my current standing, mixing with their locals." It was an honest answer, if not the entire truth.

Prentiss finally spoke as she pushed an enlargement of a fingerprint across the table. "Those are some pretty great lengths to go to, in order to maintain privacy."

Elle felt each slice of the razor blade as she thought about the night she learned the trick from the _other_ side of her family. The side she never talked about at the FBI. "Well, my Uncle Osvaldo picked up a few things in his work, and since it worked for him with Castro, I figured it would work for me."

"These must be dangerous people you work for, Ms. Greenaway." Rossi's condescending tone was something she was far too used to dealing with in her life, but she knew how to deflect it.

"Just business men and women who are in need of a little assistance in dealing with the dirty details of Latin American politics and culture, Agent Rossi." She paused before delivering the blow. "But especially when the _government_ encouraging them to invest down there leave them hanging in the wind at the slightest hint of trouble."

"So, you mostly handle the terrorist ransoms and plant security, then?" Agent Prentiss seemed to be slowly entering the conversation with her confirmation questions.

"If that's what you want to call it, yes." She purposefully kept her answers short and to the point.

"Then why the need for so much secrecy? Those people could care less who you are, or used to be, anyway, as long as they get their money." Elle turned slightly to regard the woman with a raised brow. She made a very valid point, and for that she would be rewarded.

"Fair enough… It would probably be for the part of my work that isn't ransoms and run of the mill security. And probably because I knew that the intrepid Supervisory Special Agent Hotchner would flag my records. I guess I just didn't want him on my ass every time I turned around."

"In other words…" Agent Rossi flippantly tossed the accusation at her, "You were in hiding." Elle turned back to glare at Agent Rossi.

"If that's the way you want to look at it, then so be it. I file my tax returns, I have my driver's license renewed, my cars are registered and my mail all comes to Elle Greenaway of Seattle, Washington. But yes, when I travel, I use another name and another identity. Take it up with the Customs office." She wanted to cross her arms, but she knew the shackles would clank if she even tried, not to mention it would give Rossi the pleasure of knowing he had made her defensive.

Agent Prentiss was apparently playing the role of good cop in this exercise as she tried to calm everyone down. "We've gotten a little off-track, here."

She shuffled a few papers and then looked directly at Elle as she worked to make some kind of connection with her. "The reason for the questions about your fingerprints is because we had difficulty matching your prints in the house to those on file at the Bureau, and we wanted to know why you were obscuring your identity."

Elle decided to let her continue the tactic and nodded at her explanation, waiting for her to go on. "You say that you lived in that house for a period of approximately eight months. When was that, exactly?'

"Well, I was in Ecuador for most of July last year," Elle carefully recounted the timeline, making sure to be accurate. "But I know it was after my trip to Chile in May, so it must have been June when we cleaned out the main house, so about sixteen months ago?"

"We?" Agent Rossi seemed to be intrigued by her answer.

"Yes, of course." She waited for him to ask the question she knew he had been dying to hear the answer for.

"That would be yourself and who else?" A faint smile tickled at the corner of her mouth as he continued to dodge the real question.

"That's a ridiculous question, Agent Rossi, and one you already know the answer to. Maybe you should try again." Elle just wanted to ruffle his feathers for a change.

He appeared to chew back the comment he obviously wanted to make and glanced very quickly at Agent Prentiss. "Very well… Was Jason Gideon the other part of your 'we'?"

"Yes, he was." Again, she kept it short.

"What was the reason for cleaning out the house?" Agent Prentiss jumped in again, possibly to help Agent Rossi maintain his cool.

"Jason thought it was wasteful to continue keeping up both places. And after his son Steven got married, Jason wanted a place he and his wife could stay in the States between trips. So, we cleaned it out, top to bottom and made sure it was ready when they got there."

"And where did you stay after that?" Again, Agent Rossi asked a vague question, intentionally skirting around the point. It was obvious he was trying to lead her by the nose through the interrogation, but she refused to grant him that wish.

Instead, she kept her answer short and just as vague as his question. "Same place I had been."

"Where was that, Ms. Greenaway?" The amiable Agent Prentiss came in to calm the fire again.

Elle was tired of playing the game, so she simply launched forward. "You already have my prints and who knows what else if Hotch brought in his favorite field tech. So, please, stop with the games and just ask the questions you want to ask me. I'm not hiding anything from you, and even if I wanted to, what good would it do me?"

"None at all." The tinge of anger was evident in his tone as Agent Rossi pushed the open file in front of her. "Can you explain why we found Agent Gideon's body, with a bullet in his brain, buried on a hill in back of the main house?"

"Because you were looking for it."

The barrage of questions and answers that followed would have made even a Perry Mason episode look real.

"How did it get there?"

"Because I buried him there."

"Who shot him?"

"I did."

"Where's the weapon?"

"In the safe in my condo in Seattle; combination four-two-four-two-four-two. I would appreciate you not cutting it open, so that my sister doesn't have to replace it later." And with that she was done. The rest was in the hands of the authorities.

Rossi shook his head in disgust as he wrote on his little pad. "If you were so concerned with convenience, then why didn't you turn yourself in to begin with?"

"Because I haven't done anything wrong." Her answer made both of them shoot incredulous stares at her.

"You took a man's life? And if Hotch's suspicions are right, it's not the first time. So how can you even think about saying that?" Rossi was downright indignant with his question. But she understood his frustration. She had felt it herself, before coming to terms with the truth.

"'For there is one thing I can safely say: that those bound by love must obey each other if they are to keep company long.'" She never understood the quote until all those months ago. No matter how many times it was explained to her, she never truly grasped it until she had known the bonds of love.

Agent Rossi's eyes narrowed and looked at her as though she was questioning his faith. "You can't possibly try to pin this to something motivated by love. Or are you going for an insanity defense?"

"I'm no less sane than anyone here." She glanced at the glass behind the pair with her statement. "And you can believe what you want… You asked the questions, and I answered them honestly."

Agent Prentiss locked eyes with Elle for a few moments, as though she was trying to find the answers in her eyes. When she broke the stare, she glanced at Agent Rossi. "I have a few more questions, Ms. Greenaway, if you don't mind?"

Elle rattled the chain against the metal bar and said, "As if I have a choice."

Agent Rossi leaned back and ran a hand over his beard. He seemed confused for the briefest of moments, but never once did he block Agent Prentiss from speaking. He only exhaled and gave a small nod to Agent Prentiss before saying, "Answering them is still your choice."

"True enough, but regardless, that's what I'm here for, so please, ask your questions, Agent Prentiss." Elle's tone never wavered. She was resolved to her fate no matter what, and a few more questions were not going to make any difference in the long run. She had made peace with the truth, but it was obvious the members of the BAU were still searching for theirs.

"You said that you lived in the main house for eight months, but had not been living there for the fourteen months previous. This would lead me to believe that your relationship with Agent Gideon started out as something other than romantic. Is that true?" That time Elle allowed a small smile to ghost over her face.

"I wouldn't necessarily call my relationship with Jason romantic, but yes, it changed while I was out there." Elle was intrigued by her choice of words and waited to find out where this line of questioning would lead.

"Then what made you seek out Agent Gideon in the first place?"

"I'm not sure exactly…" She paused to consider her answer. When she had heard about Jason's departure from the BAU it shocked her. She was convinced that Jason Gideon knew better than anyone how to separate the different parts of his life into little boxes, and detach himself from the work that they did. Learning he had failed in that regard intrigued her. "I think I was still looking for answers then, and I guess I thought he might have them."

"What were the questions?"

Elle was impressed with Agent Prentiss' ability to ask such concise questions. She wished she had been given such a remarkable gift when she was with the BAU. "I suppose I was trying to find out what I had done wrong. Maybe what had changed in me that I still couldn't see. Sometimes, you need to find old friends in order to see yourself, so I guess that's what I was looking for when I started tracking down Jason's location."

"No hay mejor espejo que la cara de un amigo viejo." Elle focused intently on Agent Prentiss as the other woman spoke in Spanish, the words of her grandfather. "There is no better mirror than the face of an old friend."

"Exactly." She smiled at the woman, grateful for Agent Prentiss' insight into her family background.

Agent Rossi interrupted them to ask, "How did you find Agent Gideon? We know he didn't make it easy."

"It's my business to find people who don't want to be found, Agent Rossi. It was my business even before I joined the BAU, and I'm very good at it." She waited for him to go back to scribbling his notes before continuing. "Taking what I learned from Spencer, and from what I knew of Jason and the team, I had a pretty good idea of how to track him down. It took a little digging, and some unexpected family history research help from my sister, but I was able to find the property in Idaho. I used a few of my contacts to confirm his location and then I went out to see him."

"When you left the BAU, it was under strained circumstances…what made you think Agent Gideon would even want to see you?" Agent Rossi again interrupted.

"I knew him well enough to assume it wouldn't be a problem." She tried to dismiss his smug question.

"No one knew Jason Gideon well enough to assume that. Not even his own son. So, what gave _you_ this incredible insight about him?" With that question, Rossi sounded just like every man who had ever questioned her worth over the years. It was condescending, it was fake, and it made her blood boil, but she was not about to let that kind of attitude win. Not when she could help it.

She practically spit the words at him, "As my grandmother always said, 'Porque una papaya hala mas que una yunta de buey.'" Agent Prentiss was forced to stifle a laugh at the old Cuban saying.

Prentiss turned when the words were met with silence and found Agent Rossi attempting to will her to answer his unspoken question with his eyes. "Well, loosely translated… Um, a, ah, a _woman_…has a stronger pull than team of oxen."

Elle rolled her eyes at the sugar-coated translation. "Very loosely translated."

The look on Agent Rossi's face forced poor Prentiss to explain the vulgar saying further. "In other words, she knew there was a, ah…_physical attraction_."

Rossi quickly looked away from Prentiss, and narrowed his gaze on Elle when he asked, "Did the two of you have a relationship prior to your finding Gideon in Idaho?"

"Not in the physical sense, no, but it wasn't for lack of attraction." She looked at the glass again when she admitted, "There were other mitigating factors."

Prentiss was not about to let her slide on that one. "Which were?"

"For starters…he was a superior and a mentor, and we thought it best to keep our relationship professional at the time." Elle tried giving them the company line, hoping it would be enough. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt anyone else.

"What were the other reasons?" Prentiss never lowered her gaze when she was addressing Elle. It was a tactic she imagined served the agent well in normal interrogations.

Agent Rossi began to grow restless as she paused to contemplate her answer. Using his unease to delay the answer, she asked, "Is there a problem, Agent Rossi?"

"Yeah…" He got up from his seat, straightened his clothes and buttoned his jacket. "You're wasting our time." He pulled out a folder from the bottom of the stack and tossed it in her direction. "It's all in your personnel file. Gideon made note of every conversation. We know you had a thing for him. So, stop trying to play it out as some star crossed lovers scenario."

Elle was not able to help herself, she actually smiled. Two years before and she would have taken the bait. But she was not that person anymore. "You can think whatever you like, Agent Rossi. I know the truth, and that's all I need." She looked between both agents and shrugged, "Obviously you've found a way to handle those problems in your own relationship, but Jason and I needed some distance from the BAU to figure it out."

They both worked far too hard to not look at one another as she calmly outed them. Instead of waiting for the denials, she pushed forward, "Regardless of what you might believe, I'm quite certain the physical evidence is there to prove it. It wasn't easy, but Jason and I managed to make a life together."

"Fine, you had a relationship." Agent Rossi returned to his seat at the table. "But that doesn't explain how he ended up with a bullet in his head, and why you just walked away."

"I did what I had to do, Agent Rossi, and I've made peace with that. Everything else is out of my hands." Her answer was flat and emotionless. She was being honest when she said she was ready to accept whatever fate had to offer, but she planned to keep the rest locked away in her heart.

"We really don't need a motive. So, if that's all you have to say, you'll be arraigned in the next opening on the docket." Both Rossi and Prentiss stood up from their seats and began collecting their folders. "You've been charged with the deliberate murder of a federal officer, and given your _business_, I highly doubt they will be granting bail."

Agent Prentiss stopped to offer one piece of advice as she carefully took the photos from Elle's sight. "Regardless of how you plan to handle the case, legal counsel is your right."

"Thank you, for that, but it won't be ne-" She was interrupted when the door swung open as Reid slipped loose from Morgan's grip to enter the room.

"Why, Elle? Why'd you do it? You got it all, so why'd you have to destroy him, too?" Morgan and Hotch pushed into the room to restrain the crazed younger man.

"I didn't destroy him, Spencer. And we never took anything from you." She wanted to explain everything to him, but she knew the truth would hurt him more than anything else.

"You're here, and he's lying on a slab, and you never said a word to me, not once in two years! How is that keeping your promise?" His anger rolled off of him in powerful waves. "You promised me! You swore you'd tell me the truth, always. Tell me now, why'd you do it, Elle?"

He was right. She had promised him that she would always tell him the truth. When he found her in Seattle, he promised he would keep her location in confidence, as long as she vowed to always be honest with him. The weight of that promise forced the words out of her mouth. "Because he begged me to do it!"

The power of her simple statement silenced the entire room. It was as though everything stopped in that single moment of time. The only way she knew they had not frozen was when Spencer pulled out of Morgan's suddenly weak grasp.

"He… He begged you? Begged you to kill him?" Spencer's every word dripped with hurt.

She involuntarily pulled against her bonds and rattled the shackles as the tears she thought had dried up began streaming down her face once more. "He… We had, ah, just gotten confirmation about Steven's death. I did everything I could to get him out of there, including bribing the locals to hide them, until we could hire a team, but…it was too late by the time we found out. Jason was barely holding on by a thread most days, and just being with him wasn't enough to ease all of his pain. I tried, we both did, but he just didn't have that much to give anymore. All he had left were promises."

The word choked in her throat. Jason lived by the principle that a man was only as good as his word. And his word meant everything to him. "He only had two promises left keeping him alive; his promise to Steven, and his promise to me."

"Lorena told us about his promise to Steven." Reid's voice sounded infinitely smaller than before.

"And it died with him." Elle remembered Jason saying those same words to her when she tried to help him through the pain. "All Jason wanted then was to end the pain. The pain of his existence was greater than any man could bear, and there was nothing I could to take it away from him."

Morgan could no longer handle being a silent bystander. "Then why didn't he just do it himself? Gideon never needed anyone to do his work."

She swallowed hard, and got ready to answer him, but Hotch beat her to it. "Because he promised her he would never leave." Elle could only nod at Hotch's statement. "Everyone always left you, didn't they, Elle? And the reason you felt safe to go about your work was because you made him promise not to leave you while you were gone."

"And Jason could never break his promise. So, he needed me to release him, to end his pain…"

Agent Prentiss was the one to find the last piece of the puzzle. "Because that's what you promised him."

"And now his pain is over. All that's left is the rest of my life…however long that may be."

Spencer stepped forward and moved around the table. He took a deep breath and then knelt down beside her. Elle tried not to look in his eyes. She knew he would see too much.

When he wrapped his hand around her forearm she squeezed her eyes shut tight. "Where is it, Elle?"

Still refusing to look at him, she asked, "What?"

"It's not in his effects, and they haven't found it at your place yet." She swallowed hard, knowing exactly what he was talking about. "And I understand Jason well enough to know he wouldn't do this." Spencer paused, and squeezed her arm as he said, "Not to someone he loved."

Elle could not bear to look at him. She shook her head and pleaded, "Spencer, please don't."

He blew out a nervous breath and she felt it brush over her arm. "I'm sorry, Elle, but I have to, because I can't do it either. Not to you, not to him."

"Reid?" Hotch spoke from right behind Spencer, and she knew the others were just as close.

Spencer patted her arm tenderly and then turned back to the others. "Jason kept a private journal. In it, he kept all of his suicide notes. He'd been fighting the depression for years." He stood up beside Elle and laid his hand on her shoulder. "Jason wouldn't want Elle to take this, not if he trusted her with his life and his death. He would have left an explanation. He always promised me he wouldn't leave without an explanation, because he couldn't bear anyone else carrying the same guilt he did."

His fingers squeezed her shoulder as he said, "And Jason always kept his promises."

_What is better than wisdom? Woman. And what is better than a good woman? Nothing._

_-GEOFFREY CHAUCER, "The Canterbury Tales"_


End file.
